♪ all on thinkorswim. from td ameritrade. 90 seconds left. in case you're wondering what carnival cruise lines' stock is doing, i don't know what this is about. last few minutes the stock has come back almost unchanged. down nine cents right now. down sharply about an hour ago. as for the rest of the market, as we said, the dow cannot get anything going to the upside today. it's tried a few times, but we're just sitting here below the unchanged level here, and i wonder, ben willis, the market seems higher here, doesn't it? keeps bumping up against 14,000. >> it's a bull that won't lie down. keeps moving and keeps moving. moving sideways. most professionals that you and i talk about, it won't give up

either. >> not going anywhere. >> not going anywhere so sideways is better, but it's a difficult tape to trade, actually kind of boring, so you grab on stories like carnival cruise lines. >> i learned from ralph acampora the master years ago, never short a boring market. >> absolutely 100% true. >> but we've gom very far. >> exactly, and most professionals will look for it to buy back and rather than buy it you buy protections. the way most guys are playing it right now. >> you're not buying anything. keep your powder try and will have a chance to buy them cheaper, i don't know when but soon. >> we're all waiting. >> going out with the dow down 8.5 points. the s&p and nasdaq finishing slightly positive. stay tuned. more on the carnival cruise nightmare and james grant joins us to talk to us about why he thinks interest rates are going sharply higher. and it is 4:00 on wall street. do you know where your money is? hi, everybody, welcome back to the "closing bell." i'm maria bartiromo on the floor.

new york stock exchange. thanks for joining us. market mix on a day that we saw a flurry of m & a action. the dow jones industrial average down about 8.5 points. close but new cigar. kept trying to reach the positive territory but did not close there. the nasdaq and s&p held on to gains even fractional. nasdaq up two points and the s&p up one point. equities barely. positive territory for the week. what's keeping investors on the sideline? back with me is josh brown, cnbc contributor and david darsch and ben pace from deutsche bank private wealth management also joining the conversation. good to see everybody. thanks for joining us. what do you think? i guess we've had a very strong performance prior, several weeks, several months, but what's keeping investors on it this week? >> the banks have been so good, maria. they are up 9%. transportations are up 12%. master limited partnerships which we've highlighted here up 14%. the market does look a bit ahead

of itself with the low volatility index, the vix. you've got tremendous amount of bullishness. there's -- there's money that comes -- you may be experiencing what they call the great rotation. you highlighted that where people have had so much in cash and bonds that they are pushing it over into stocks to get yields, to get this capital growth. the banks are the bodyguards of the market. as long as they act well, the markets can continue to rise. >> you think they will act well? >> we do. >> michael, what you do you think? >> i think the market is tired and there's still a sense out there in retail and in institutional portfolio managers that the market is somewhat contrived. the fed has been feeding this margot, feeding this market, feeding this market hoping that the economy picks up the ball and runs with it to justify what the market has done. that hasn't happened. if you asked anyone last year what you thought market would do this year, you would think they might get 7%, 8%. we've got 7%. the market needs to pull here and take a rest and we'll see where it goes. any pullbacks will be bought,

but i don't expect the markets to do much more in terms of total return for the year. >> the low hanging fruit has been taken, if you will. >> no question. >> ben pace, what are you hearing from clients? >> clients are nervous it's come too far too fast, but they are noticing the fundamentals are improving. most importantly, maria, the concept of 0% cash which is going to be 0% for long term, four years beyond the 2008 crisis, it's starting to burn a hole in investors' pockets. they want to invest it. they know they have missed a lot already, so whenever you get the slightest pullback, they are looking to get back in. >> okay. really that buy on the dip mentality that continues sort of prevailing. josh brown, how do you see it, and how do you want to be allocating capital these days? >> i mean, look what happened this morning we come in and had these pretty dire gdp statistics from europe overnight. really nothing to be happy about. bank of japan had a bad gdp report also. the market was down for 11

seconds and then it spent the rest of the day trying to crawl its way back. people should grow accustomed to that might be the way it is for a while, and if we are going to have that deep seasonally, it would make sense to start thinking about it. here at 2011, 2012, very similar pattern. a hot february and january and all of a sudden everyone gets concerned with second half of the year growth and everyone takes down gdp expectations, almost like clockwork, and sometime mid-summer when people realize that other shoe they were worried was dropping doesn't drop they start to buy it back up. if we repeat that pattern this year, i won't fall out of my chair. definitely something to that, so that's what we're prepared for. we're long this market and have been for a while, but as i mentioned in the earlier segment, we're not bursting at the seams to add new longs. happen we what we own, and we will be taking advantage of those opportunities. >> pretty good deal that we saw, heinz as well as the airline merger. what does that tell us about

where they are? >> he bought heinz because of their global footprint. it's a 140-year-old company. last year kraft bought cadbury, a 100-year-old company. that's basically got a global footprint. that's what buffet is doing. his money is going into wrigley a couple of years ago u. want these global giants, and that is health care. it's pepsi. it's coke. it's colgate, and in health care it's johnson & johnson. only 20% of their sales are emerging markets. colgate is 50%. johnson has a great upside potential there. stock sales for 14 times earnings. tremendous profit margin, 70% gross margin. buy johnson & jondon. >> will we see more m & a? >> the size of the deal is getting bigger. comcast, now part of the comcast family. you see heinz field today, more and more deals. the market is very interesting because the market hasn't really embraced it. the market didn't do much. you would think on a deal the size of the heinz deal you would

think the market would climb to new grounds. the market is going to tell us it's stock by stock, a stock picker's year. the stock pickers with a good eye will make a lot of money. the rest of us, the rest of the investing public is going to sit there with their 7% returns and be happy to have them in the end. >> the market didn't react to this deal because there's no capacity being taken out. this is essentially a new owner, but nothing really changes with the company. it's a great deal for berkshire and for the private equity firm involved. this is not the type of merger that gets people excited. the type of merger that gets people excited is when one company buys its closest competitor, and then all of a sudden the other companies in that space, their assets become a lot more valuable, but we haven't seen that yet. >> explain -- explain the non-reaction to the airline deem then because that's exactly what i just said. >> right. >> we need to see capacity come out of the air. >> if you add up all the profit of the airline industry earned since 1948, the number is negative $32 billion.

that's not a deal anyone is paying attention to. we want tech deals. we want to see some of these companies sitting on 30 billion, 50 billion, 137 billion. when you start seeing capacity taken out in technology and wireless, et cetera, i think that that's the kind of market that the market gets excited b.industrials, too, energy, too. we want to see that kind of activity. >> buy japan. we talk about it week after week. buy japan on a heblged basis if you can find it that way. look at the jobs number. the fed, the new fed is the employment report, and the ability to most markets. if you get 190 or 200,000 on march 1st, two weeks from tomorrow, that's the february jobs number, you're going to see the market lift. you want to see profits, production. you want to see personal income, and you want to see politics. that's one thing that could stall the market if you've got a fiscal sequestration. >> why are you so hot on japan? i know japan has rallied so much? why do you think it's going to

continue? >> mr. shirakawa will leave room for mr. abe to put in a person that will gradually weaken the yen and stimulate the economy and get it the into inflation of a 2% target. we like the japanese exporters. they don't want to get the other countries upset with them. >> right. >> and come after them for a better thy neighbor's policy. our view is the yen which is 93 now can go to 100. these stocks have another 25% plus in dollar terms, maria, ahead of them still. >> we'll leave it there. gentlemen, thank you very much. we want to get to breaking news. julia boorntsin is all over the cbs earnings. >> shares are falling after hours as earnings in revenue come in a bit lighter than expected. the company reporting fourth-quarter revenue of $3.7 billion. that's up 2% from the year ago quarter. wall street analysts had been expecting revenue of $3.78 billion.

now, adjusted eps came in at 64 cents per share. wall street was looking for 68 cents per share. now, just digging into these numbers a little bit, the company did benefit. overall revenue up 2% from a year ago led by a 3% increase in advertising revenues and a 9% increase in affiliate and subscription fees, so that shows that cbs is growing its non-ad business faster than anything else. now there, of course, is going to be a lot of question about what cbs is going to do with its outdoor business. there isn't that much more additional detail in this report but we do expect to get more color on the outdoor business coming up in the earnings call which starts at 4:30. maria, the stock continues to move lower on the fact that earnings and revenue were a bit lighter than expected, and it seems to be driven from the fact that the local broadcasting revenue was a little bit lighter than analysts were looking for. >> all right. thank you so much. julia, we'll keep watching that stock on the move here in the extended hours. meanwhile, the other major story

we're covering. the disabled carnival cruise ship, simon hobbs with the nightmarish vacation that's coming to an end. >> the four tugboats dragging the "triumph" have retartd towing it after one of their tow lines brought and the estimated time of arrival in port is 9:00 to 11:00 central. that's 10:00 to midnight eastern. the bad news is that even when the disabled cruise ship reaches mobile bay towards midnight, it's not clear that it will actually be allowed to dock. the port says the pay's tricky cross-currents may be too difficult to navigate at night, because the bay is ten feet deep outside the shipping channel and the winches and thrusters are disabled. goldman sachs is putting a preliminary estimate of $40 million repairing the ship in addition to lowering earnings for the full year because it could be out of service for three months. the fear tore investors, bigger

fear for investors is tonight's hours of disembarkation become a global live television event that seriously harms industry bookings. for the moment analysts seem quite relaxed arguing that past events with no loss of life have not really impacted the business longer term and the bookings in cruise ships are so price sensitive, a slight slip in price will bring the volume back and attempts to regain the pr initiative, it's reported that carnival officials including the president and c.o.:in recent hours have boarded the ship in order to talk to passengers, attempting to stem criticism in part that had this picture of the founder's son watching his own miami heat team play as normal tuesday night where the boat at that stage was stranded 200 miles from alabama. the latest that we have is that a thus conference has begun by carnival, and we'll bring further details to you as they break. back to you. >> simon, what a story.

thank you so much. michelle caruso-cabrera is actually on her way to the gulf as we speak. she will have reaction from passengers all day tomorrow right here on cnbc. it's almost friday, folks. the dow losing ground for the second week running so far this week. the nasdaq, s&p 500 flirting with what could be their first negative weeks of the year. josh lipton is running through today's winners and losers. over to you, josh. >> winners an laggards in today's session starting with the s&p 500. the big winner constellation brands rocketing up, raising a bid to buy the u.s. assets of brewer group modelo and an attempt to apiece regulators for the haush haush/imbey v deal. berkshire hathaway teaming up with 3g capital to buy heinz and in the red today, century link, the land lied provider, cutting its dividend by 26%. whole foods also having a down day. the supermarket chain forecasting weaker sales and margins for the rest of 2013.

as for the dow, winners on the day include alcoa and banks like jorg anne which edged higher. the worst per former among the blue chips, general motors, which reported and missed estimates. wider losses in europe and higher costs in north america. guys, back to you. >> all right. we'll leave it there. thank you so much, josh. much more ahead on this jam-packed edition of the "closing bell." high seas drama will take you back where the carnival cruise ship is slowly being tugged to shore right now. stranded passengers complain of overflowing toilet but management says they are doing all they can, and now the lawyers are lining up. also ahead, have you checked your 401(k) lately? if not, you should. two of wall street's top money pros will be here to tell us why you can't be out of these markets. jim grant and founder of the news publisher bearing his name says there's a toxic alignment in the bond market and a whole

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welcome back. call it the brewing of the perfect storm that will not end well for the global economy. note the economist jim grant said central bank easing, ultra yields and actress to sovereign credit are creating what will

soon be a regrettable situation. jim grant from an interest rate observer is with me now in an exclusive. good to see you, jim. >> what is this perfect storm and how do you see this playing out? >> well, i looked at the screen today, mar yashs and i saw that the u.s. treasury is borrowing for ten years at 2%. now a bond or a note is a promise to pay dollars which currency is undefined. it is the state of mind, what the market will bear, what the federal reserve chooses to impose, but don't you think it's a little curious that in this particular moment in our financial lives the treasury is paying only 2%. for example, the world over there is a contest by governments to cheapen their currencies. the strong currency is the old maid of world monti affair. the value banks the world over are going to ease and hyper ease and people we thought are extremely radical in their monetary predilections like ben bernanke are about to be outflanked by others still more

radical so the monetary revolution is devouring its children. and the principle under, you know, support of the argument that treasury and government yields ought to be 2% or 3% is that there is kind of a persistent deflationary undertone in the world, that the credit is contracting, and the debt is -- how is it then that corporations are floating record volumes of junk bonds at record low yield, about a dozen junk bonds came in the past six weeks at yields of less than 5%. they have taken the highs out of high yields and yields out of high yields. >> so, i mean, why is that. what do you think the answer is? >> i can explain it this way. i submit to you that muscle memory is about the most important unrecognized feature of financial behavior. this is a new they're for you, and can you write this down, if you like. bond yields have been going down and bond prices have been going up approximately for 31 years.

it's more than a generation in a financial career. people are in and out in fewer than 31 years. >> right. >> and i think people have come to assume that what interest rates do when they get up in the morning is to climb. >> that's what they have seen for so many years at this point. >> i say that this moment in interest rates is as intellectually or analytically indefensible in a way as were 15% yields way back when, when the cpi was printing it much, much less than that. >> and yet we're all wondering if there's this occasion when money is going to start coming out of bond and finding a home in the stock market. now, from a practical -- on a practical level in terms of investment theory, you're bearish on bonds and you said that the odds are stacked against bondholders, so why are investors still pouring money into bonds? as we have this tremendous run in the stock market. we're not seeing evidence of that. >> because it has worked for 31 years. look at what's happening.

never mind the amateurs. look what the professionals are doing. pimco and double line are both invaulg close-end funds that will buy junk bonds on leverage, not enough that they are buying junk bonds at near record low yield and call protection, they are also applying leverage to this non-value proposition. it seems that the world sen thralled to yesterday's idea, yesterday's idea being that interest rates always and everywhere decline. i remember distinctly that they went up once. >> there's some debate about the fed stimulus obviously and little debate about the fact that the fed stimulus is propelling this market because we're still sketchy in terms of the fundamental, you know, changes in economic improvement, but let me get your take. do you think it's all about where rates are in terms of these? the flow that we saw today, the big deal, berkshire acquiring heinz, big deal in the airline industry. what do you think is behind that? >> i'm not sure about the

valuations of those two companies, but i do know about the valuations of securities with which these deals are financed. you can borrow and there's a mad, mad rush for new loans to stock called collateralized loan obligations, the vessels that hold the bank debt, the finances, such transactions that occur today, that can't get enough loans, so you need stuff to fill a vacuum so we need loans to fill the clos. debt financing, credit financing, is incredibly cheap and incredibly easy to obtain, and that might be a good reason why the deals are coming now. >> do you think it continues? >> yeah. >> yield flow is going to pick up? >> i think so. >> nobody knows how this will end, but you've been a critic of the fed's policy for a long time. >> since before the fed was founded actually, 1912.

>> but just the most recent stimulus the last couple of years has really gotten you out -- >> the defenders at war on the price market. the most important single feature in our collective, commercial and financial lives, the fed will have no part in it. >> how will this end? >> badly, and i wish i could say it ends soon because it would be so nice to have something else to talk about. i've begun to sound like a car alarm about this, but the fed will not acknowledge that it's suppressing prices, what it's doing is a species of price controls. interest rates are prices and the fed is manipulating them on the yield curve and the fed under the very pretty phrase balance channel is hurting people who maybe don't know any better into assets that may or may not be suitable for them. >> real quick. . i know they said 2015, rates

will stay low until 2015. >> what side that? >> that's what the fed said. do you think they will start unwinding question this year? >> i think it will be handled by circumstances. if they seem to think it's in control of events, in fact, events will be in control of the fed, and once something happens to force the fed to tighten, the world we want to get in front of the federal reserve selling these securities which is amassed and there's a multi-trillion dollar volume so it seems to me we can't know the timing and we can have a sense a little bit of the dynamics. >> that's a great point, and that's really what we're all focuses on because that will cause the market disruption. >> it will be, as they said in the trade, news. >> news for sure. jim, always nice to have you here. jim grant joining us. if you need a good dose of news today, check your 401(k) statement. chances are your balance is up and so are your returns. details on that next along with the individual investors and whether or not they are ready to get back into the game and

convicted ponzi schemer bernard madoff says he had some help, and that was the bank. you'll want to see this letter. back in a moment. but i'm a busy guy. it used to be easier but now there are more choices than ever. i want to know exactly what i am investing in. i want to know exactly how much i'm paying. i want to use the same stuff the big guys use. find out why nine out of ten large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. risk includes possible loss of principal.

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it manages rose to a record in the fourth quarter. that's the good news. the bad news is the side of that balance helped by the stock market and gains in higher contributions, the average balance of a 401(k) account rose to $77,300, up 12% from the more than $69,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011. on average participants saving 8% of their salaries, 12% when you factor in the company match. the increase is encouraging but also a reminder americans need to save more for retirement. determining that final number will vari on the individual and their needs, but eleanor blaney at certified financial planner board says a baseline number you should shoot for is 20 times your expected annual expenses less your retirement income so if expected expenses like housing, health care, food and car are 50 n.o.w. and you receive $20,000 a year for an old pension or social security you need to save $20 times the difference or $600,000. it may not be pleasant, but it's an exercise worth doing at least once a year and then adjusting

your savings in order to reach your retirement goals. maria, back to you. >> all right, mary, thank you so much. if the 401(k) is back, will the individual investor keep this moving. michael yoash cammy says this is indeed an indication the retail investor is back in this market. eric marshall is director of research and portfolio management and he says the average retail investor is far from jumping back in. thanks for seeing you, gentlemen. thanks for joining us. michael, you says the 401 s balance sheet shows how they are flowing. >> we manage over $1 billion of client monies and have eight or nirn certified financial planners and go through exactly that same process with our client, and it is astounding how many people have not adequately planned for retirement. that number that was actually just mentioned, how much you need, is probably far short of what you need if what jim grantham just said, essentially

a case for hyper inflaigs flakes coming down the road means you're not having enough money. i think you're starting to see the indication now with 401(k) balances. >> eric, you're not a believer here, the retail investors has not gotten back then. who is buying and what's driving this rally? >> they haven't jumped in with both feet, for sure. i think we've had five consecutive years where money has flowed out of equity funds and we've had, you know, a month and a half where money has come in, but we're still very, very far from the main focus. we see the pest way to accumulate wealth over time is by really owning a business and that's what equity ownership represents. we're still in the very early innings of money coming back into markets and one of the key cat lifts will be to eventually see interest rates pick up and people wake up and realize, oh, my gosh, i could lose money in a bond fund, you'll start to see a

wall of money moving back into the equity market. we're still in the very early stages of that. >> that's one of the cat lifts, but i think the biggest catalyst for investors is when they get the 401(k) statement that's actually invested in equities, and they see a balance going up, rather than massive volatility on the downside. you know, i also think what's going to happen is as investors continue to hear from other people they are associated with, as the news starts to tout that the dow sat 14,000, dow 15,000, it might be 75% or 80% on the upside too late, but that sort of media coverage is what tends to cause money to flow into markets. now, maria, you just got done saying there's massive amounts of money going into bond funds. that's true, but that's beginning to slow. you're starting to see people put money into emerging markets, u.s. equity assets. that kind of flow is beginning. not new steps all the way in process, not an all the way in process yet, but it's starting to happen right now. >> isn't some of the 401(k)

growth just a reflection of market performance? >> of course. it's a matter of flows as well as market performance, but we see this with people that we work with all the time. they have a new found belief that maybe the equity market isn't going to lose all their money for thernls and maybe they will start to put another half percent, another 1%. another thing, too, maria is companies are starting to match again. many companies actually stopped matching, and when you have a match, even if the employee is putting in whatever they are putting 3%, and the match reappears, that's going to increase the flow of money into 401(k)s as well. >> eric, final word here, should people have confidence now and invest more money in the 401(k)? >> i think they should. equities is a good risk reward. we like valuations here. there's been 400 billion leave equity markets. i think if you get half of that money flowing back in here over the next two to three years, you'll see nice moves in stocks,

and like i said earlier, i think that owning a business over a long run is really what stocks represent. and that's the best way to accumulate wealth over time. >> all right. we'll leave it there. gentlemen, thank you very much. going to see you soon. keep watching that. really interesting take on that story. meanwhile, it was bernie madoff who drove many small investors out of market with his historic ponzi scheme. madoff wrote a valentine's day note to our own scott cohn from the jail cell and in it he alleges the banks may have been complicit in their dirty dealings. wow. when did you get this letter? >> well, actually, maria, it's a bunch of e-mails from the prison where he's staying in north carolina, and, you know, a valentine for me, maybe, but opposite for irving picard, the court-appointed trustee who has spent the last year rouyning up money for the victims with decent success as reported and madoff should get some credit for it. he pressured big clients to pay up or would tell all. madoff has been no help at all

which has madoff so frustrated that he said maybe he shouldn't have pled guilty. he writes i wish i went to trial and he should have been required to provide the evidence. madoff says he keeps offering to give picard more information but picard says he's never come through. madoff says he stands ready, quote, i have little doubt that the information i could provide would clearly demonstrate the vital role the major banks, like jpmorgan played, in carrying out my fraud including the role in handling the accounts of my major customers. the ball is in picard's court. most of the claims have been dismissed and the bank insists they knew nothing and also take issue with the fact that madoff's sons mark or andrew should or knew about the fraud. both picard and his attorney demonstrate the lack of knowledge of how the market and proprietary firms operate.

the investment advisement business the heart of the fraud was separate from the trading business where his sons worked and it was separate because it was required by s.e.c. law. >> thanks so much. scott cohn with the latest there and as simon hobbs reported earlier, goldman sachs has cut carnival cruise lines earning estimates so what other rough seas are ahead? on wall street one passenger is planning to sue, and we'll speak to a crisis management pro. and the democrats think they have a solution to avoid automatic spending cuts, but it has a lot of tax increases, so would it pass through the republican-led house? we'll take you live to washington in a moment.

welcome back. smart democrats presenting their plan to avoid automatic spending cuts schedule to take place on march 1st, today members of the president's cabinet were on the hill if the cuts do kick n.hampton pearson with the details on that. how you doing? >> reporter: with 14 days to go top cabinet officials are sounding alarm bells and behind-the-scenes efforts to head off the sequester heating up. $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts will impact the real economy. homeland security secretary

janet napolitano predicts travel nightmares at major airports if thousands of security personnel and air traffic controllers are furloughed as planned. >> at the major international airports, average wait times to clear customs will increase by 50%, and then our busiest airports like newark and jfk, l.a.x. and chicago owe o'hair, peak wait times which can already reach over two hours, could grow to four hours or more. >> reporter: $800 million in hurricane sandy relief money could be cut, further delaying repairs for thousands of homes and small businesses in the new york and new jersey area. >> the sequestration seriously threatens our hurricane sandy recovery efforts. a 5% cut amonths to $3 billion from the sandy suspectmental just passed by congress, taking away crucial funding for repair and recovery, howing, transportation and other areas. >> senate majority leader harry

read caucused with democrats over a plan to head off the quester. it calls for a ten-month delay, a 50/50 split of tax cuts and revenues, the price tag $120 million. almost all the new revenue could come from implementing the buffet rule and cutting the subsidies for big oil. house speaker john boehner says when the senate passes a bill, he'll be happy to take a look at it and moment ago the white house released a statement endorising the senate democrats plan and calling on congressional republicans to follow that lead as well. maria? >> all right, hampton. thank you so much. as the nightmare is nearly ending for the passengers, it may be just beginning for carnival. the disabled "triumph" cruise ship is slowly getting tugged to shore. a lawyer and a crisis management

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liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? bob will retire when he's 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. but he's not. ♪ he's an architect with two kids and a mortgage. luckily, he found someone who gave him a fresh perspective on his portfolio. and with some planning and effort, hopefully bob can retire at a more appropriate age. it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. welcome back. carnival cruise giving an update to the media in mobile, alabama. simon hobbs with the latest. >> i'm afraid it's more bad news effectively, maria. carnival's svp of marketing terry thornton says it's going to take seven to ten hours in order to dock the vessel, so

that leaves it possibly as late as 2:00 a.m. eastern, after 2:00 a.m. eastern. the reason for that, he says, as we were talking about earlier, by far the biggest ship ever to dock in mobile and the terrain is very tricky to get it through. they say that they have 200 people already at the facility in order to help people disembark and one of the major problems they have is the result of losing power, there's only one functioning elevator on the ship on emergency power. therefore, it will take four to five hours to disembark the 4,000 plus passengers and crews. passengers will have to carry their own luggage, but there will be crew at every stairway in order to help them down each of those flights of stairs. paperwork is taking place on board the ship now in order to speed death embarkation, mainly customs, of course, carnival also says that guests -- one guest was disembarked due to a medical issue. a decision was taken to take one man off.

they have food and lodging clearly on offer for the families through the night, and that they will provide any additional information, maria, as soon as it becomes available, but that headline figure there, that they may not dock until after 2:00 a.m. and then spend four to five hours disembarking is very tricky for all concerned. back to you. >> amazing. nbc news's jay gray is standing by in mobile, alabama, the ship's destination with the latest developments. jay? >> reporter: maria, yeah. over 100 family members waiting at the port and have been throughout the day. they continue to get news of extended periods, longer it will take for the ship to get here, and as you just heard four to five hours for passengers to disembark so it's going to be a long time before they see their loved ones here. as the waiting grows, so does the frustration and anger. a lot of people very frustrated about how long it's taken the ship to get here and how long it will take for their loved ones to get back down and off of that

ship so the saga continues, and, you know, what else can you say when they come to you and say, hey, by the way, after four days in such terrible conditions and everything going on we might have a little problem. the tow rope has become disengaged. that a blow to a lot of people here who thought maybe by now they would be reunited. that's not going to happen until the early hours of the morning, as you just heard, maria. >> all right, jay. thank you so much. jay gray with the latest. when the carnival cruise ship "triumph" docks in alabama later tonight cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera will be dockside to get a firsthand look at the damage and will be reporting all day tomorrow on the aftermath of the oceanic fiasco. what's ahead for carnival, this lawyer says get ready for the lawsuits. andrew, good to have you on the program. thanks for joining us. can passengers sue carnival? what do they have to show to sue carnival? >> the good news is they can sue carnival. the bad news is when these passengers booked their ticket, they signed one of the most restrictive contracts i've ever

seen. it's a 6,400-word contract, and basically they have to show, in order to get real compensation, anything other than de minimus compensation, they have to show a physical injury. the good news for carnival is that there don't appear to be any physical injuries on board, so i have a feeling eventually when all this litigation is done you're going to see very, very small payouts to these victims. >> well, do you advise passengers to try to sue even if technically, you know, they can't? i mean, will carnival settle lawsuits to try to minimize the damage to their reputation? >> well, that's -- that's a good question. i think we're already seeing carnival's strategy, and what they are doing is trying to make a preemptive offer to these folks, $500, plus a round trip ticket and another booking on another cruise in the future. now, this contract that is between carnival and these passengers, it is extremely restrictive, and -- and most of these cases won't be venued here in the united states. most of these contracts don't

allow -- the class action contract, which is something that carnival would be wary of, and there's a reason for these, because these cruise lines have had problems in the past and got pretty smart at limiting their liability, and if these passengers can't show a physical interest because of the contract they agreed, to there's going to be very, very little liability on the part of carnival. >> would you go on a cruise any time soon? >> you know, i would. now, maria, there's also been a lot of problems in the cruise industry that really haven't gotten much attention. of course, we all know with the "concordia" disaster, but there's been a lot smaller disasters as well. ship fires are relatively common. there's been big problems with crimes committed by crew members on passengers, and these cruise line industries, these companies, have been very aggressive in courting congress to prevent this sort of liability that they are really fearful of. look, millions of people go on these cruises each and every year and there aren't a problem, but the bad news is if there is

a problem, your damages are going to be really, really limited. not much you can do. >> leave it there. andrew, good to talk to you. thanks so much for your insight on this. we'll see you soon. andrew stole theman joining you go. whale watching next. what stocks are billionaire investors buying and selling today? today's deadlines with their quarterly reports on equity holdings. we're on it. tomorrow night's movers. our panel of wall street pros will show you where to move your money tonight and tomorrow. back in a moment.

p re welcome back. right to kayla tausche we go. breaking news on berkshire hathaway. >> we're getting a 13-f filing from berkshire hathaway, big news. here's some of the stakes the company add the in your case fourth quarter of last year. archer daniels midland, a commodity company. also a new stake in veria sign, $3.7 million. on the stakes increased, berkshire doubled and added 10 million shares, now owns 25 million shares in gm as of the end of fourth quarter. also increasing in directv by 4.5 million shares. increasing precision cast parts also in oil well varko,

1.1 million share increase to 5.3 million shares overall for that stock. but we should note here, maria, these are not really buffett-sized moves. all the stock purchases we did see in the fourth quarter were under $200 million. so likely these decisions were made by portfolio managers and not by buffett himself when he buys he usually buys in the range of about $1 billion of stock or more. maria? >> all right, kayla, thank you so much. europe, business spending, consumer sentiment. some of the things on our watch list for today's market panel. each of whom have 30 seconds on the clock to tell us what they need to prepare for tomorrow. let's check in with them. jim key of south texas money management. gary wedbush of wedbush securities and american wealth management. guys, good to see you. kick us off, what's on your radar for tomorrow? >> well, a couple things. i think the positive from the negative gdp number last quarter was the 2.2% increase in personal consumption expenditure.

so i think people are going to be looking to the consumer stocks like they were today. companies like campbell, kraft, vf corporation. burger king. also true, the second thing is business spending in addition to industrial production, i think the market is going to be looking to companies like lincoln electric, dr automotive. >> all right. we'll leave it there. gary, you're up. keeping a close eye on europe? >> hi, maria. yeah, europe and u.s. budget are the main hurdles for extending our rally. closely watching the news flow on the march 1 spending cuts, the prices of european southern sovereign debt. i expect these two items will cause the s&p to back off below 1,500. but then you've got to buy the u.s. equity market very aggressively. i like the technology sector the most. highly leveraged through the accelerating recovery. it's cheap, it's lagged the s&p by almost 70% by january 1. and i've got to say to my wife and three beautiful daughters, be my valentine. >> aww!

come on. that's great. thank you so much for that, gary. >> lathe, how are you going to beat that? 30 seconds on the clock. what do you want to prepare for tomorrow? >> hi, maria. tomorrow we're watching the consumer sentiment number and expecting a slight increase. also watching the industrial production number, specifically capacity utilization, as consensus is expecting an increase to 78.9% and the bond market declining as the stock market has gone higher this year, which looks inflationary. but strangely some of the old standby inflationary hedges such as gold seem to be sitting out. keep an eye on them and whether their current support levels will continue to hold. >> all right. we'll watch those support levels. thank you so much, everybody. appreciate it. cashing in on all that cash is next. take a short break and my thoughts on what's driving today's deal action. stay with us. with fidelity's new options platform, we've completely integrated every step of the process, making it easier to try filters and strategies... to get a list of equity options... evaluate them with our p&l calculator...

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more "likes." more tweets. so, beginning today, my son brock and his whole team will be our new senior social media strategists. any questions? since we make radiator valves wouldn't it be better if we just let fedex

help us to expand to new markets? hmm gotta admit that's better than a few "likes." i don't have the door code. who's that? he won a contest online to be ceo for the day. how am i supposed to run a business here without an office?! [ male announcer ] fast, reliable deliveries worldwide. fedex. welcome back. quick update. market flash from josh lipton. over to you, josh. >> news from u.p.s. let's get you caught up. u.p.s. announce that the board of directors has declared a regular quarterly dividend of 62 cents per share. that is an increase of some 8.8%. u.p.s. basically unchanged here in the after hours. maria, back to you. >> all right, josh. thank you so much. josh lipton.

and finally tonight, my observation on what could be a big impact to come on the stock market. this, of course, is that cold, hard cash on corporate balance sheets. we have been talking a lot about the $3.6 trillion burning a hole in the pocket of corporate america. in my opinion, this is one of the strongest and best parts of the entire global economic recovery. after the 2008 financial collapse, companies everywhere moved to get lean and mean. they cut jobs, cut investment, and they raised cash. as a result, today companies are in some of the best shape we've seen in years. but who cares how much cash they have if they don't allocate it. if they're just sitting on it? which is my point. we are approaching the moment when sitting on so much cash becomes a problem. these companies will have to use that cash, and it will likely come in the form of deals, dividends and bibs. sitting on cash that is not earning any money with these record low rates does not help shareholders and they will be increasing pushes to get those